


June 4 - Let the show begin.

by VFGremlins



Series: Mina Interregnum [1]
Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Penny Dreadful (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 05:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10587504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VFGremlins/pseuds/VFGremlins
Summary: This is a series that imagines what happened to Mina Harker between the end of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker to the beginning of the Penny Dreadul series where she reappears. It will attempt to reconcile these two storylines, as well as add an additional backstory for a, in my opinion, underrated heroine. The writing style is that of the original novel - Mina's journals and newspaper clippings will be the bulk of it.This is my first EVER attempt at fanfiction - I hope it's ok! I don't think it will be very sexy :/





	

**Author's Note:**

> Was it a vision, or a waking dream?  
> Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?
> 
> Ode to a Nightingale, Keats.

Journal of Wilhelmina Harker.

June 4  
It is a strange and dreadful thing to be recording my thoughts here again; I have not felt the urge to do so since that time long ago when all felt like a nightmare around me. I had hoped those days all long since passed, yet now even with my dear Quincey shooting up like a weed and Jonathon near by me I cannot help but feel the old nightmare drawing close to me again as though our victory – and how hard fought it was! – was nothing but a respite, an intermission in a terrible play as old as evil itself. Even now sitting in the solarium of our home in Exeter I fancy I can feel the tendrils of the old horror creeping under the doorsills, like a the edge of a winter’s chill.   
But enough of all this! I told myself I would write only what I could verify as happening, as the good Doctor Van Helsing so kindly praised me for doing so long ago, and not indulge in maudlin nostalgia and hysteria! There, I have calmed myself. Now I will put everything down precisely as it happened.   
May 7th was Jonathon’s day at the court in London for the Todd case; as Quincey was away at school I had the day quite to myself. We had had a very trying spring up to that point, but that day in particular was quite fair and I joined the throngs of people taking advantage of the change of weather and took a constitutional around 10 that morning. Wholly by chance (although I must wonder even at that, now!) I ended up in the square, where a travelling expedition had set up a tent-museum for the Wonders of Egypt show they were to put on later in the month. I am thoroughly inured to that sort of panopoly now, of course, as Dr. Van Helsing's lectures on the subject have quite disabused me to any notion that these caravans might have any article whatsoever that hailed from farther away than Portsmouth, nevermind Africa itself. This caravan, however, was rather more understated than its fellows. Perhaps it was the lack of ostentatiousness, the absence of obsequious bravado that piqued my curiousity. Or perhaps yet – No! I will not postulate. I must record.   
Suffice to say I payed my tuppence to the blandly stern frontman and entered the unbedecked confines of the tent. As I paused outside to glance up at the unpretentious wooden sign, I was passed by a couple on their way out, both seemingly unimpressed with the wares on display and the woman, indeed, complaining to her companion that they ought to demand their entrance fee refunded! Far from dulling my interest in the exhibition, I found myself more intrigued than ever at the strangeness of the whole affair. It was with an incredulous laugh half caught in my throat that I pushed my way past the heavy folds of the practical oil cloth.   
It was immediately apparent why the couple had felt themselves used. The interior of the tent was sparsely lit but even more sparsely populated; the artefacts on display being all of a size rather smaller than the average lady’s hatbox, and with no glass jewels or splash of painted gold to be seen. Instead of the garishly painted billboard that would normally accompany the items of such a display, each wooden plinth was affixed with a frame in front that carried a simple piece of paper covered in dense typewritten paragraphs. Reading through these essays revealed that the items on display were such treasures as a ‘shard of pottery, vessel unknown’ from ‘the time of Pharoah Zoser’. Zoser, whoever he was, had apparently been beset by bulls, as all the pottery in room was in some state of disrepair from the ‘probable drinking cup of lower level royal family’ to the ‘consecration vessel of the High Priest of Heliopolis’, but all of it seemed to come from his age. It took very little time to take a look around the scattered, shabby artefacts, but I amused myself trying to make sense of the info sheets. This apparently passed some time, as when I exited found myself at the back of a magic show, in the style of the séances which are become so popular. A taciturn looking bearded man was stationed in front of a large open brazier with a few coals in it and lecturing passersby in a bored-sounding voice barely audible above the cheerful hubbub of the open square. His assistant, an equally bored-looking youth slouching under the weight of his freckles, was holding out an oiled leather bag to the few bystanders who had stopped to watch. It was just as well that he lacked any interest in the proceedings as he might have well taken offence to the reactions of some of the people who took the time to peer into the proffered bag – one woman recoiled so that she nearly hit the gentleman behind her with her hat! I was stationed behind the proceedings, still by the entrance to the tent as I couldn’t quite make out how to escape the area without interrupting the spectacle. I had just decided that I would slip away to the side by jumping over one of the tents guylines – I had got as far as sidling over and bunching my skirt in my hands - when the careless assistant happened by me and in a fit of vigour and determination so far at odds with the demeanour he had demonstrated up to that point, let fall the leather bag at his side, seized a lock of my hair with one hand and swiftly cut it with a vicious pair of scissors he had secreted about himself! Imagine! I was so shocked that I found myself with my mouth agape and my skirt hitched around my shins, standing stock-still by the rope guyline. Before I could muster the presence of mind to voice my obvious objection to this wholly unorthodox proceeding, the youth had passed the leather bag and my poor lock of hair over to the showman who unceremoniously dumped the lot onto the hot coals of the brazier. Part of the mystery was then solved, for I saw the contents of the bag that had caused the fine lady in the hat to recoil so violently – twists of hair of all colours and textures, not woven and worked as we are used to seeing them, nor yet even carefully braided as a memento; no, instead merely tied, all of them, with a black ribbon – souvenirs of the dead! And all tossed and jumbled together like discarded playthings, with no thought given to the memory of those passed or the feelings of the unfortunates who had surrendeREd the keepsake. These, along with my stolen lock, were all carelessly tossed onto the fire as the showman stentorously continued his mumbled lecture.   
This sotto voco monologue came to an abrupt halt, however, when the hair dumped onto the coals erupted in a great, blue flame, many times the height of the showman. For the space of a heartbeat the flame dominated the square, apparently swallowing all sound as it shot to the sky in a terrible pillar of vivid blue before extinguishing, just as suddenly, with a noise like a match strike, and being replaced by a thick, twisting column of oily smoke which refused to move any way in the breeze but instead followed the path carved for it by the blue flame and reached straight towards the heavens. The showman was seemingly just as shocked as the audience as he stood back from the brazier with his mouth open and gazed at the smoke with the most peculiar expression on his face. Indeed, I can only wonder how long it would have taken him to remember to blink if it had not been for the arrival of a woman in a cheap brown wig clearly missing several curls who came up behind him and loudly demanded that she still be payed even though he had deliberately excluded her from the show. She was of such a coarse and unpleasant appearance that I was inspired to belatedly execute my original escape plan and quickly dodged over the guylines to freedom, leaving the whiskered showman to his spluttered explanations.


End file.
